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Even before he was legally allowed to drink, Jude Crasta marked another important youthful milestone by getting dressed up and going to an Ontario polling station.

There, accompanied by his family as witnesses, he cast his first ballot. He was 18, and by Ontario standards he wasn’t even old enough to celebrate afterwards with a beer.

But Crasta, now an associate vice-president of external affairs for the University of B.C.’s Alma Mater Society, said it is an exercise more parents should conduct with their children. Were they to do so, perhaps Canada’s tragically stunted voter turnout rates wouldn’t be so low.

“People normally look forward to it as a big thing to go out to a bar on their birthday but not many people when they turn 18 look at it as a time to vote,” he said. “They consider drinking cool, but what they don’t consider cool is voting or talking about government.”

On Wednesday Vancouver election officials used Crasta as a poster boy for a campaign they’re unfolding to try to lift the city’s voter turnout rates in the November 15 civic election. From a major bump up in the number of advance voting days and places to new assistance devices for people with disabilities to allowing voters to cast ballots anywhere, the city is trying to encourage more people to get out and vote.

Janice MacKenzie, Vancouver’s chief election officer, said the city wants to raise voter turnout by at least four per cent from last year’s 34.6 per cent. Over the long term it has a target of raising voter turnout to 60 per cent by 2025.

That may look like an impossible task, especially when Vancouver’s traditionally dismal voter turnout rate is only marginally better than other B.C. municipalities. Overall, less than one in three eligible voters in B.C. cast ballots in the 2011 civic election, according to the Union of B.C. Municipalities. The worst turnout, at 13 per cent, was recorded in Langford. The highest? Bowen Island at 83.3 per cent.

But high voter turnouts in Vancouver aren’t impossible or unheard of. A good political race, a scandal, or the aftermath of the two world wars have propelled people to get out and vote. In 2002 over half of Vancouver’s eligible voters cast ballots when Larry Campbell led his Coalition of Progressive Electors to a near-rout of council, park board and school board positions.

This year the incumbent Vision Vancouver council, after three terms in office, is girding for a fight with a renewed centre-right Non-Partisan Association and a fractured but still formidable centre-left. Across B.C., voters will also be selecting candidates for four-year terms.

MacKenzie said people give many excuses for why they don’t vote. They are too busy, they feel their vote doesn’t count, they don’t know the issues, or they forgot. Vancouver’s busy ballot, with 27 spots for council, school and park board, is also sometimes cited, she said.

But such attitudes are ultimately not healthy for society, said MaryClare Zak, Vancouver’s managing director of social policy.

“Voter turnout is often used as a barometer of community engagement,” she said. “We think this goal of having a 60 per cent turnout by 2025 is certainly doable. I’m telling you it is even doable for November because if everyone who voted brought with them someone who didn’t vote the last time we would meet our target.”

MacKenzie said the city will, for the first time ever, have advance polls at high-traffic public areas, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Oakridge Mall and International Village Mall. It is part of an “8-8-8-8” strategy: eight advance polling days in eight locations, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. A total of 120 polling stations will be open on voting day, Nov. 15, and unlike in the past people will be able to vote wherever they want, she said.

The city will spend $2.7 million conducting the election, including $300,000 on assistive devices for the disabled, including “sip and puff” machines for quadriplegics, magnifiers for enlarging print, and a headphone-equipped audio system that will read the ballot to visually-impaired voters. The city also plans to hire youth as young as 15 to work in the polling stations to help send a message that civic participation is for everyone.

“We want to make the locations as accessible and as convenient as possible,” she said. “We want to make casting a ballot as quick and as easy as possible.”

Crasta said the Alma Mater Society will also undertake a public education campaign to encourage students to vote. Of the 40,000 Canadian-born students attending UBC, most live off campus in Vancouver or other municipalities, he said.

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Vancouver wants to almost double voter turnout to 60 per cent by 2025

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